A realtor business that is going online requires several things from its founder. Firstly, no matter the size of your company, your site should be designed such that it shows professionalism: well-designed and user-friendly. That's where real estate website templates can make all the difference - they create the idea of design you trust (essentially, if your site looks beautiful, then your company is trustworthy).

Secondly, it has to utilise all the latest web standards, web design trends and make sure you have a top-notch user experience. Otherwise, how will people believe that your business is a professional enterprise? How your site looks is what matters the most.

When it comes to web design, there are two options — but only technically. In truth, going with a pre-made WordPress template has so many advantages, that a custom design becomes too heavy a choice. There's one perfect analogy between a realtor business and online business: both of them are fast. The environment changes quickly, but the clients always demand quality.

There are several key advantages to using a pre-built property website templates when launching your realtor business online.

Web standards. If you go with an established template provider, like TemplateMonster (we use their themes as examples for this article) you can be sure that all the latest web standards are supported right from the very beginning. HTML5 and CSS3 are baked in, the code is clean and simple. There's groundwork for detailed customization and neat stuff, like parallax scrolling and animated image sliders.

Customization. One of the most popular mistaken ideas about pre-built realestate agency website templates is that they are not customizable. Looking exactly like a hundred other property businesses online is a real fear, right? Well, fear not: these days, pre-made templates offer a huge degree of customization, down to the smallest details.

You can switch buttons, menus and panels around, mess around with colors and palette, and, of course, change all of the imagery. Using such plugins as page builders, you can even create a design using literally, drag and drop functionality (read our review of Elementor to learn more). Invest some time into this process and what you'll achieve is a result that looks nothing like any other property agency websites on the internet. Always make sure you pick a trusted web designer, like for example, ourselves :-)

Price. A custom design could easily burn a hole in your pocket. Picking the right freelance designer, explaining to them what is it you want to see, waiting for the result and then discovering that it is totally not what you were after can suck up a lot of your resources.

It's all time, money and energy-consuming — and in such high-octane business as a property online agency, you'll definitely want those resources used in a more profitable task. A pre-made real-estate website template costs just under a hundred bucks and more importantly, you know what you buy right from the very beginning: with the live demos of themes you can always look at the design in action. No more struggles with cat-from-the-bag extraction.

Support. A helping hand that is always there for you is often just a dream. With Template Monster's support team it's the reality.

Those guys are there for you 24/7, ready to help you with all and any of the problems you may encounter. Stuck on the installation? Something not working quite like you expected? Want to change something but you're not sure how? Just call the support and they will take it from them. Works like a charm, every single time.

Now, let's go through 21 things you can use in order to make your realtor business a perfect design example on the internet with our choice of the best realtor website templates.

1. The home you want to buy is beautiful - its showcase should be too

Beautiful websites sell - there is no doubt about that. If you portray the house you want to sell as beautiful by taking photographs taken professionally, by somebody who has the eye, your sales pitch is 50% done!

Beauty sells - and when the potential clients come to see the property, they are already almost sold.

Undoubtedly, using Divi to power the property site you want to sell is one of the best choices you can mane. It allows you to create an eye-catching layout for your design. The great thing is you don't need to know the nitty-gritty of designing and coding to design a beautiful estate website.

With Divi, you can find tons of different features including a visual builder that allows you to create almost any kind of layouts you can imagine - all without touching a line of code.

The theme has already been used hundreds of times to create beautiful property sites - you can see a few great examples here.

2. Your Design Should Sell Aspirations

A realtor's business is based on selling aspirations and hopes. When people seek a new house to buy or rent, they often want to change their lifestyle for the better, too.

Implementing that kind of feeling in your website's design may be a powerful tool in inspiring your clients. Thing is, if you manage to inspire them, that's it: people always go with what inspires them.

Look at this property agency website template for a feel of how this design approach could be implemented. It's simplistic and minimal, yes, but the faded out photos in the background, the white icons and a touch of bright yellow are a sum greater than its parts.

3. Keep It Simple

Property for sale should not be a neurosurgery. A house is an essential and it should be simple enough to get one. That's why overcomplicating your pages with unnecessary information is bad for business. People seek simplicity, easy and comprehensible instructions and short descriptions. That's why going in for a minimal look is a sound choice.

Minimal design is a trend of the last several years. It's not a coincidence. People desperately want simple, unintrusive experiences in this age of information overflow. Thing is, there are only 24 hours in a day, and the simpler your site is, the higher the chance someone will spend their time browsing it. The tricky part is not making it too simple, sacrificing essential information and hiding everything under a bunch of menus.

4. A Cover Photo Is Worth a 1000 Words

If you want to make a lasting impression, a huge cover photo in the header of your website is probably your best option. That way people will be able to imagine themselves lying on that bed and those sofas, standing on those balconies and having a snack inside the living rooms you're selling.

This approach is even better, if you use an animated image slider. This way the cover photo will switch every few seconds. See the Comfort4U theme by TemplateMonster to look at such an approach in action.

5. Don't be Afraid to Be Different

A lot of the property businesses online look like each other. If you feel brave enough to opt in for something more left-field, it's a chance for you to attract young, modern-thinking and forward-oriented customers.

One way to do that is keeping the information on your main page minimal. Instead, go with a huge typeface, juxtapositioned on a high definition image. This poster-like design instantly evokes feelings of cinematic grandiose and futuristic pathos.

This pre-built real estate WordPress template shows the advantages of this approach in action.

6. Choose Appropriate Buttons and CTAs That People Will Want to Press

One way to make your realtor WordPress website more presentable and engaging is choosing a button design and building the website's image from it. Consider your buttons to be the groundwork of everything else.

Smart button placement can be the cornerstone of your design like it is in the template depicted below. Divide the information in clearly defined categories and assign big, juicy, animated buttons to each of them. The results will speak for themselves.

7. People Want You to Show Them the Way — Use a Map

A crucial difference between the property agencies online business and every other business on the internet is that you're dealing in reality. What you're selling is real, it exists, it's tangible: people can look at it and they can touch it and they can obviously live in it. After all, it's a house, a home.

Utilising that feeling of realness can be a powerful force. One tip on how to do it is using a map. Show your customers the location of your apartments and buildings on a map and you'll hit two birds with one stone. Firstly, your clients will instantly understand the neighbourhood they'll be living in, the notable places around and where they will be spending their evening. It's not only useful for your clients, it's a powerful way to advertise your offers: people will start imagining their lives in those neighborhoods, picking their jogging routes and locating the nearest points of interest. And once they start imagining it, it'll be hard for them to drop that image from their heads. Secondly, it's that pinch of realness that makes all the difference. Locating a property on a map instantly sends a signal that it's real: it doesn't exist in a vacuum but right here in a city — people are gonna trust such property agents / realtors more.

With a property WordPress template like Template Monster's Apartments, it's easier than ever before to place a map on your website. The support for a map plugin is baked in and you can go for a map in the header of your page. It's a great approach: a huge interactive map is not easy to forget.

8. Put Images in the Spotlight

There's a natural power in images. People sure do like looking at them. The studies show that the internet goes more and more image-first, so maybe paying special attention to the usage of images on your pages is actually kind of essential.

Especially when you're launching a realtor online business website. People want to know how their future home will look like before they lose time and money checking it out in real life. That's why photos and images are a great way to make your design better. A great photo is eye-pleasing in a way that not many of the things are, but the best kind of magic is how useful it is for your clients. Trust me, they will not forget it.

A great pre-built WordPress template can utilise images and photos in a stunning way. For example, look at the Perfect Rent theme by TemplateMonster. You can notice the painfully handcrafted structure of the image placement on the main page of this real estate website theme.

9. Be Ready to Speak Spanish (or any other language)

No matter what the Brexiters (is that a word?) say, these days the world is globalized. And with the world, so is its economy. People are going from one country to another, a lot. Some of them may even not know the language — but they still want to buy or rent a house for themselves. After all, everybody needs a home. Notice a business opportunity?

That's right: launching a version of your website in another language is a great way to attract customers and enlarge your client base. If you're going with WordPress, WPML plugin is your best option. With it, it's easy to launch a version of your site in Spanish or German — whatever language you think will be in demand.

A lot of TemplateMonster's themes support WPML out of the box. For example, the one depicted below will look just in good in any other languages as it looks in English.

10. Pay Attention to Trends

There's a lot of complicated words going around the Web these days. Flat design. Responsiveness. Parallax scrolling. Behind them stand a philosophy of design that believes that a website should not be a simple tool: it should also look gorgeous while doing its job.

A WordPress property site's design should look great. Not even because it's trendy, but because your customers will want to feel great while choosing a property or home. With the help of parallax design and animated image slider, you can achieve a stunning look that feels great in action.

Just look at the RealEstate24 website template that you can buy right now at TemplateMonster. It's a combination of complicated technology the result of which speaks for itself.

11. Be Friendly With Search Engines

There are billions of websites on the internet and with each passing day there are more and more of them. If you think that realtor business online is an uncommon niche, think again: there are hundreds of thousands of them that deal in property on the internet. Some of them are old, established and popular.

To break through the noise and find your customers you have to pay attention to SEO. The abbreviation means "Search Engine Optimization". Let me explain it quickly: optimizing your site for search engines practically means investing in your position on the Google search. The more time goes to SEO, the higher you'll be eventually on the search page. Google is the main way people find information in the internet. You'll want to be as high on its list as possible.

The problem is that SEO can be complicated (although not as complicated as you would think). There's a lot to pay attention to. Thankfully, Template Monster's real estate website themes are often SEO-friendly, so you have nothing to worry about. The one depicted below comes with search engine optimization on board: time + money = saved.

12. Colors Will Do the Trick

A carefully chosen color palette can attract a lot of customers all on its own. After all, it's no secret that a lot of the people are visual-thinking. Their first impression with the color palette will make or break their experience with your website. A bright, well-lit design that stands out from the crowd solely on basis of its colors is always a diamond.

Contrast is one visual way to achieve a striking color palette. Pick to colors that compliment each other and apply them to your website. When it comes to realty business, it's always a joy to use a well-designed, bright website — because so often such sites are dull, grey, boring, packed with unnecessary information.

For an example, go to the apartment template, pictured below. Its usage of white combined with several careful touches of red is outstanding. The color is balanced in a nice, pleasant way — just what an online realtor business needs.

13. Readability is Key

Every other tip will do nothing for the success of your online business if your website is hard to read. People who seek property to buy often spend hours if not days reading various descriptions of properties and comparing them. They are tired of too small to read typefaces and weird fonts.

Make those people happy and pay attention to the readability of your website. Often the best way to achieve it is going with a classic combination of a dark gray text on a simple white background. The Real7 property website template by TemplateMonster is a great example of how simple it can be to browse such a website.

14. Put Social Media Front and Center

More and more, your client's lives are happening on Facebook or Twitter. That's why it's crucial for your realty business to have a social media presence.

Placing social buttons right on top of your main page may be a great choice if you're planning to involve a lot of your customers in your daily online activities. Maybe you're planning to launch a sale or a fun competition soon? There's no better way than Facebook to tell the world about it.

This pre-built WordPress Apartments for Rent or Rentals theme by TemplateMonster is a great example of using social media buttons to frame the entire website. They are unintrusive, but it's impossible to visit your website and ignore them.

15. Have a Detail to be Remembered With

One of the most popular business advice is making your approach more personal and memorable with attention to details. In offline property marketing, experts recommend putting bright flowers or a nice toy inside the apartment you're selling to catch people's attention.

However, we're speaking about online property marketing. To be memorable on the internet, choose a simple detail that no one else has and go with it. Maybe it's a special shade of some color or a pop up animation that happens every time somebody buys something from you.

The Loans and Mortgages pre-made WordPress template goes in a different direction. It uses orange color in a really smart way: there's a touch of it in the logo itself, a detail, that is instantly recognizable and hard to forget.

16. Build Around a Slogan That Is Worth Believing

Sometimes a lot of information can be misleading. In real-estate business, selling a property often comes with speaking out one perfect phrase. One perfect phrase is actually the only thing that stands between you and closing the deal.

Don't waste time writing 800 words descriptions of what you're offering and why you're different. Instead, choose a slogan and build your design around it. That way, your website will be a powerful call to action.

This pre-made apartment WordPress theme was built with that approach in mind. Look at the slogan in the middle of the main page, smartly put on a bright orange background that instantly catches the eye. A company with such a promise is worth following.

17. Use a Responsive Design

We live in a universe where a lot of the people use their smartphones to browse the web. As various researches show, sometimes their phone is the main or the only device they experience the web with. It's a huge percentage of market and it's all living people. Many of them want to buy themselves a house or rent an apartment — all on the go. It would be highly unwise to lose customers ready to use your help.

That's why making the website of your property agency business, responsive is a must. Responsiveness means that your website template is adapted to the size of the screen on the fly — there are no various versions of your website, it's all the same design. The most important quality of responsiveness is its continuity. Your website will look different on a Retina MacBook and on a smaller screen of an Android phone, it's a given. However, your website must not only look good on both of those screens, it also has to offer a similar visual experience.

Thankfully, these days practically all of TemplateMonster's designs come in with responsive design built-in. This way you lose the headache: everything works like it should right from the box. For example, look at the Oblia theme on a large screen (below) and on a smaller phone screen.

18. Show Them What You've Got

One of the most common mistakes among the property agencies online is not showing what they are offering front and center. Your website should be pleasant to look at, right, and well balanced as well, but think about it — what's the most important information you can share with your customers right away?

It's the price. Putting your offers on the main page and combining them with the prices will instantly engage your clients. Nobody wants browsing a website for minutes, only to find that the price is a bit too high for their liking. Instead, put the price on the main page and let your customers decide for themselves what they'll go with.

For an example on how to do it right, look at the Laguna Seca pre-built WordPress template:

19. Make Your Customers Speak for You

Sometimes hearing a friendly voice is a tipping point — if your client was unsure before, they'll be instantly persuaded by the words of another client. That's why putting a testimonials section on your main page can be a great way to rapidly increase your business statistics.

The science behind it is easy. People don't like the uncertainty of buying something from an ageny business they didn't have a relationship with before. Providing positive comments by random customers will remove some of that uncertainty.

This template illustrates a great way to put a testimonials section on the main page of your WordPress real estate website. It comes under the essential parts of the website, so it's not annoyingly obtrusive. First, your client looks through what you're offering and finds what he or she is looking for. Then they read a comment by one of your previous customers and discover that you're great. The emphasised photo highlights that the person behind the comment is real.

20. People Believe People

When you're going around setting up your online realtor business, don't forget to tell your clients who you are. A section on the main page with a quick description of your company will do nicely.

After all, people want a more personal approach, even when they are buying or browsing properties on the internet. Telling them about yourself is a great way to establish that personal connection.

The 4Rent pre-built realtor website template by TemplateMonster does the job with a two column section in the lower part of the main page. That way, your clients will be able to learn who you are quickly and they'll see that you have nothing to hide.

21. Don't Forget About the Newsletter

Keeping your clients up-to-date with a weekly newsletter is a great and trendy way to interact with your customers. In a newsletter, you can speak on the secrets of your business, provide best deals and advertise your newest offers. Your clients are busy, so they want information coming to them.

Often a client of a property agent won't have the time to regularly browse your website in search of attractive deals or necessary property. Instead, tell that customer what's new and what's upcoming yourself.

Putting a newsletter subscription field on the main page is really important. If you hide the field in a menu many people will ignore it, but when it's only a step away from being subscribed, what's to lose? This WordPress real estate website theme offers a perfect example of placing a newsletter block on the main page: it doesn't steal the spotlight, but it's there, ready to help.

Realia is a fully responsive Realtor and Rental Portal template for WordPress based on BootStrap. You can create a property portal in really easily easy way since Realia supports the dsIDXpress WordPress plugin and the new WP Theme customization API, which allows you to make design changes in real time! The theme has 20 colors variations, 10 background patterns, 3 header setups and boxed or full-width version so you can easily match the brand colors you are looking. Since the theme is based on Bootstrap, you know that it is fully responsive for all types of devices - of course on the major things you'll need to look out for in a theme these days.

WP Residence is atheme designed for property agents and agencies. Using this theme to power your WordPress real estate website you can allow people to submit their properties for free, for a fee or based on a monthly subscription. It has a really clean user-friendly design, and it features options like:

and many more. This WordPress theme has an extremely good rating, and it won't be a long time before it becomes one of the most popular themes of all time. Of course, it's also FULLY responsive and RETINA ready.

ElegantEstate essentially turns your WordPress website into a full-featured property website. The theme makes browsing your listings really easily and adds special integration features for property info, photos, Google Maps and more. The search feature is really simple to use and is, of course, an essential feature in any site which contains a significant amount of listed properties.

Incidentally, if you love the stuff from ElegantThemes, you might want to have a look at CollectiveRay's Divi review and our Divi vs Avada showdown! While if you're a fan of Avada, we've also reviewed that here.

If rather than being an estate agent, you just want to create a website for a particular piece of property you want to sell, you'll need to find a real estate WordPress theme which focuses specifically on a single piece of property.

Solus allows you to do just that - focus specifically on a single piece of property and make it the showcase of your website.

This specific theme has a number of good things going on

Demo Content is included so that your theme matches the live preview!

Unlimited Color Schemes that are easy to customize from a front-end color picker

Retina Support: Solus is optimized for high-resolution displays like the Macbook Pro with Retina Display, iPhones and iPads

Responsive Layout: Looks great on any device!

Video Documentation with a detailed written help file

Translation Ready: Translate to any language easily.

Built using HTML5 Boilerplate for a fast, robust and future-proof site!

Homeland is a responsive and retina ready with a minimalist approach, flat clean design and clean. It is a great solution for realty professionals and agencies working in the property domain. It includes features which makes it very easy to not only add property listings to your site, but also organize and categorize them in the ways which make sense for the potential clients. It also has two theme layout (full width and boxed style).

ThemeFuse templates may seem a little bit pricey when compared to other templates but really and truly, you don't need to think much about the price when going for this template.

This is because this template will definitely put that professional touch to your property website. It is very very different in style from what we've shown so far, in that it looks like a graphical dashboard rather than a website. For example, pricing of properties is done via a nice slider, whilst the switches look very realistic, just like real switches rather than "web switches".

A lot of attention has been given to the small details in this theme - it shows that a lot of thought has gone into designing and developing this theme

If rather than specifically for real-estate you want to feature architecture or you want your real-estate website to feature architecture strongly, we have you covered too!

Architecture is a theme designed especially for an industry that needs a minimalistic design with a feel of an ‘Architect’. The good thing about this theme is that it comes with a very powerful administration panel. You can control almost every element colour via this panel. This theme is designed with 1140GS and looks really good with screens that have a very large resolution such as those larger than 1280px. It still also looks very good on smaller screens since the theme is fully responsive.

Which WordPress Real Estate website template do you like best? Is there anything else which you like? We'd love to hear from you? Please do share with us below.

One more thing... Did you know that people who share useful stuff like this post look AWESOME too? ;-) Please leave a useful comment with your thoughts, then share this on your Facebook group(s) who would find this useful and let's reap the benefits together. Thank you for sharing and being nice!

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CollectiveRay is run by David Attard - working in and around the web design niche for more than 12 years, we provide actionable tips for people who work with and on websites. We also run DronesBuy.net - a website for drone hobbyists.